At John Moore Elementary School, handiwork is required of all students. Second-grader Eric Jackson worked on a knitting exercise. Chronicle photo by Jerry Telfer

At John Moore Elementary School, handiwork is required of all...

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What Waldorf teachers call nature tables have been characterized by critics as altars. Chronicle photo by Jerry Telfer

What Waldorf teachers call nature tables have been characterized by...

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A student allowed teacher Cris Chavez to mist her face with lavender water after recess on a hot day. Chronicle photo by Jerry Telfer

A student allowed teacher Cris Chavez to mist her face with...

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Third-graders at a Waldorf school in Sacramento played wooden pentatonic flutes, kept in carrying cases (foreground) they knit themselves. Chronicle photo by Jerry Telfer

Third-graders at a Waldorf school in Sacramento played wooden...

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In kindergarten classes at John Moore Elementary, dolls have no faces, so that pupils can use their imaginations to assign emotions. Chronicle photo by Jerry Telfer

In kindergarten classes at John Moore Elementary, dolls have no...

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Dan Dugan of San Francisco is a member of the group People for Legal And Nonsectarian Schools, which is suing in federal court to prevent schools based on the Waldorf system from receiving public money. Chronicle photo by Jerry Telfer

Photo: CHRONICLE

Dan Dugan of San Francisco is a member of the group People for...

Religion or Philosophy? / Critics say Waldorf schools' unusual methods make them ineligible for public funding

2000-10-30 04:00:00 PDT STATE -- The dolls in this kindergarten classroom have no faces, and plastic toys, computers and television are discouraged here and at home.

In a computer-obsessed world where many parents worry about college before the little ones even start kindergarten, the John Morse Magnet School, a public elementary school in Sacramento, is using a gentler approach. Television watching and computer time are frowned on before age 9. Instead, children are encouraged to move about and experience the world with all their senses, not just their eyes.

"We are a play-based kindergarten. You won't see our children sitting and copying letters out of a workbook," said John Morse teacher Lauren Rice as a group of kindergartners prepared for a nature walk.

Neither the scene nor the pedagogy seems controversial. Yet the methods used in this public classroom have become the center of a legal battle about the separation of church and state because of their links to Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf School.

Steiner, who lived from 1861 to 1925, also founded an obscure spiritual view called anthroposophy, which draws on a number of religious and metaphysical traditions to come up with a complicated theory of child development. Proponents of the Waldorf method believe it to be a nurturing approach to learning that emphasizes art and imagination -- the faceless dolls encourage children to conjure up their own mental images. Critics call it a religion that has no place in public education.

With at least nine public Waldorf schools between the Sierra foothills and Aptos either open or in the planning stages, Northern California has become the center of public Waldorf education in the United States -- and a battleground for critics who object to the schools' ties to Steiner and anthroposophy.

On one side are Christian conservatives and secular humanists who have formed an unusual alliance -- People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools (PLANS) -- and have filed a federal lawsuit in Sacramento contending that publicly funded Waldorf schools violate the Constitution's guarantee of the separation of church and state. The suit, scheduled for trial this spring, could have national implications for the future of public Waldorf education.

On the other side are those who say the Waldorf method treats children as individuals with unique needs, rather than miniature adults who all learn the same way. And they insist that Waldorf strategies -- such as integrating art throughout the curriculum or making sure all students learn music by playing the recorder -- can be used in public schools without imparting Steiner's spiritual values.

SCHOOLS HAVE ORIGIN IN GERMANY

Steiner started his first private school in Germany in 1919 for the workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. Within nine years, a private Waldorf School had opened in New York. But Steiner's pedagogy did not find its way into the public school system until 1992, when a Waldorf magnet opened in Milwaukee.

The debate is complicated by the obtuse nature of much of Steiner's writings on anthroposophy and arguments over how much the philosophy informs the Waldorf method in the classroom.

"Fundamental to (Steiner's) work is the view that the human being is composed of body, soul and spirit, and that the Christ event is key to the unfolding of human history and the achievement of human freedom," says the Web site of the Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, which is the West Coast training center for Waldorf teachers.

All Waldorf students, even those in public magnets and charter schools, learn about Old Testament biblical figures in third grade and Christian saints in second grade, but supporters say these historical figures are taught alongside secular heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi to impart moral and historical lessons without putting forth any religious beliefs.

For example, a second-grade teacher at Morse said she planned to include a story about St. Francis of Assisi and his kindness to animals in a future lesson.

"We are all public school teachers, and we know how to present things without imparting some kind of advocacy or approval," said Wheeler de Quero.

Another area of disagreement involves the nature tables that are staples in most Waldorf kindergarten and primary classrooms. Public Waldorf supporters view the tables, covered with pinecones, rocks and seashells, as a way to teach respect for the environment. Critics view them as altars that promote sun worship and pantheism.

"You don't see it unless you've read Steiner's work," said San Franciscan Dan Dugan of PLANS, which is suing the Sacramento city school district and another Northern California district, Twin Ridges in Nevada County, because of their public Waldorfs.

Waldorf supporters say that while teachers may be exposed to the philosophy of anthroposophy in their Waldorf training, not all teachers embrace the spiritual beliefs.

"Waldorf teachers, like their students, practice all different kinds of religion. No one is worshiping anything in the classroom," said educator George Hoffecker, a Waldorf supporter and director of charter services for the Twin Ridges Elementary District, near Nevada City. "The PLANS group is taking educational activities and attaching their own spin to them."

The legal challenge has spawned an unusual union between the Christians and nonbelievers.

"We are strange bedfellows," said Dugan, a San Francisco sound engineer and former Waldorf parent who has collected an extensive private library on Steiner in his quest to make the case against public Waldorf education. "This unites people who would hardly ever speak on most issues."

But there is much at stake, both fiscally and philosophically.

Charter schools, including the ones singled out in the PLANS suit, allow parents to create their own schools and receive public money tied to enrollment, but religious schools are barred from the practice. Magnets, like the one in Sacramento in the suit, also provide public school parents with more choices by attracting parents from outside a school's neighborhood because of unusual programs, such as an art-centered education.

Because the public Waldorfs operate as magnets and charter schools, many parents, who otherwise would have to pay up to $8,000 a year for independent Waldorf schools, are able to send their children to tax-supported Waldorfs in Northern California for free -- which irritates many of the Christians involved in the suit.

"The Christians see these Waldorf schools based on a whole set of spiritual beliefs, and they question why this is allowed in a public school, but the Evangelical Christians or Catholics can't have the same access," said Dugan, who is not religious but a skeptic who thinks spirituality has no place in public education.

STATEWIDE REPUTATION FOR CHARTERS

This battle is being fought in California largely because of Twin Ridges, a tiny district in the Sierra foothills that has a statewide reputation as an incubator for the charter school movement. The charter law allows parents and teachers to receive public money tied to enrollment to set up their own schools.

Twin Ridges oversees six public charter schools based on the Waldorf model, including two in the Bay Area -- the Napa Valley Charter School in Napa and Woodland Star in Sonoma, a campus of a school in Ukiah. California allows school districts to grant charters outside their traditional attendance areas, although some legislators have tried unsuccessfully to change that law.

In the Bay Area, the Novato and Sebastopol school districts each have a public charter school inspired by Waldorf.

"A lot of this stuff, like the back- to-nature sentiment, appeals to granola-crunching yuppies, but it wouldn't if they knew what Steiner was about," said Dugan, who once had a son in San Francisco's private Waldorf school. Dugan points to excerpts of Steiner's writing that suggest blond people are of superior intelligence and black people are "childlike."

Most Waldorf parents have never read Steiner, and they don't see evidence of his philosophy in the classroom. Their children attend Waldorf, they say, because they like the education they are receiving.

In the earliest grades, oral language skills, like storytelling and listening, are stressed to get children ready to read. Fluent reading isn't expected until the end of third grade. Students also draw and act out stories to tap the different ways youngsters process the world.

Parents are pleased that teachers stay with the same students from first through eighth grade.

"You feel more of a bond with your teacher because you're together for so many years. It's more like a family," said seventh-grader Zenzi Moore, 12, a student at Morse in Sacramento.

Parents said the emphasis on free play, without plastic Power Ranger figures or Pokemon cards, is a welcome respite in a television culture that looks at little ones as another batch of consumers.

Waldorf schools do not push children to perform tasks before they are developmentally ready, which gets high marks from many parents. For example, many 5- and 6-year- olds haven't developed the eye and hand coordination necessary to track information on a chalkboard and copy it down. Their fine motor skills, which are needed for tiny hands to hold a pencil, also may need more work. That is why stringing beads or chopping vegetables with adult supervision, both Waldorf activities, are good practice for writing, supporters say.

Parent Cheryl Patzer said her son, a fifth-grader at John Morse, needed what she described as "a gentler approach" than he was receiving in a traditional Sacramento school.

"He started in a very structured classroom, and the transitions were just too fast for him. They had finished copying something off the board, and he was still getting his book out," she said. "He was always frustrated."

She said Morse teachers are more willing to adapt to the individual learning styles of their students and will repeat instructions or give children a little extra class time to finish an activity.

"I am here for a full day every week, and I have never seen anything I would call religious," Patzer said.

Recess had just ended for her son's class, and the wiggly fifth- and sixth-graders full of playground energy and hot from the afternoon sun lined up outside their classroom. Each child paused briefly at the door as their teacher sprayed their upturned faces with a spritz of lavender water to cool them off.

Within a few minutes, the students pulled out knitting and needlepoint projects from their backpacks and their nimble fingers went to work as teacher Cris Chavez transported them into the land of Narnia with a reading from "Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis.

"I feel relaxed," said 10-year-old Kasimira Bufford as she listened to the story and created an aqua and purple scarf for her older sister. "This makes me lose lots of the bad energy from the playground."

Morse teacher Merrill Eriksen, said, "I want to increase my students' skills and capacities, but I also want them to be joyful and happy human beings. If you teach only to the skills of the test, the skills of life may be ignored."